Living in a global village, learners of English should not only master the target language but also care about what is happening in the world. To achieve this goal, a Zoom-based news circle project has been designed for and implemented in my Freshman English course for Taiwanese university students of non-English major, who have long been criticized for lacking global awareness and knowing very little about international affairs and world problems. Similar to literature circles that require participants to read and discuss literary texts in groups, news circles would have the students read online news articles instead, and discuss at a Zoom meeting what has been read with their group members, each of whom plays one of the six roles developed specifically for the discussion of issues related to the news. A mixed methods study was conducted to investigate the students’ responses to this project. The major findings show that the students thought positively of the project in terms of improving English language skills and critical thinking skills, raise global awareness, increasing interest in reading and discussing international news, and understanding the necessity of communicating and working with the other world citizens to help solve world problems.